In January 2011, newly elected Illinois governor Pat Quinn imposed a 67% income tax increase on citizens and a sharp increase in the corporate tax rate to satisfy missed and unpaid bills. A month later, the state issued $3.7 billion in bonds just to make payments to unfunded state pensions. Unfortunately, …
If the goal is producing $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion in 10-year savings, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction must think big and produce recommendations with real substance. Nothing could be truer than dealing with the health care savings component. Typically, these negotiations are so focused on reaching the savings …
Give two U.S. Senators credit for trying to do something about the smoke-and-mirrors games in Washington. The “Honest Budget Act” by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) goes to the heart of public distrust of Congress, namely the dishonest budget gimmicks and accounting tricks. The public is …
When House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D–CA) staff released a chart in May that attempted to illustrate how much past Presidents increased the national debt, it collided with a meticulous critique from Politifact that in turn led to a revised chart. The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler weighed in as the …
Politico reported what many have feared about the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction in a story titled “Supercommittee operating in secret.” Members of this committee are not disclosing details of negotiations on legislation to the press or the American public. The supercommittee has become supersecret about most of what …
Senator Harry Reid (D–NV) and his Senate colleagues rejected the idea of cutting $1.5 billion unspent from a $7.5 billion advanced vehicle manufacturing technology loan program and another $100 million from the Department of Energy’s (DOE) loan guarantee program—the same program that funded bankrupt Solyndra. The political squabbling did not …
Listening to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) or reading The New York Times yesterday gave the impression that disaster relief victims were suffering from a lack of government aid. “Without additional funding,” Reid warned, “thousands of people who have lost literally everything they owned will be forced to go without …
During his Rose Garden speech Monday, the President claimed that his new “debt reduction” plan would provide $2 of spending cuts for every $1 of tax increases. A closer look at the administration’s own numbers, however, suggests the President, well, exaggerated. A realistic assessment—based mainly on table S-6 of the …
President Obama says he wants big corporations, including oil companies, to pay their “fair share” in taxes. His deficit reduction plan includes eliminating what he calls special loopholes and subsidies for oil and gas companies—despite the fact that they’re not specific to the oil and gas industry but the broader …
According to a new poll issued by Generation Opportunity and The Polling Company, Inc./WomanTrend, America’s young adults are looking at a bleak future as the unemployment rate remains at 9.1 percent. The poll indicates that almost three-quarters of young Americans ages 18 to 29 will postpone important life events associated …
